Streets, traffic and everything around

It is worth dedicating the traffic in India an own chapter. Everything you know about traffic in Germany, forget it when you should come to India one day. There is so much to tell about Indian traffic that I don’t know to start with. Well, first of all, due to the fact that India was ruled by the Britain decades ago they use the left trace and the steering wheels are all on the right side. To get a driving licence either for two or four wheelers or both of it you have to pass an exam of course. Taking driving lessons in advance is not required. Those who want to learn driving ask their relatives or friends to show them. As for the two wheelers, to get the driving licence you have to drive on a wide road and on a narrow road very slowly in order to prove that you are capable of holding the balance. Well, but apart from that there are a lot of differences between German and Indian traffic behaviour and appearance. On the roads you find more or less the same vehicles like in Germany, including cars, buses, lorries, some bicycles and lots, lots of rikshaws and bikes. Bangalore is supposed to be the town with the most bikes in the world. They cause a lot of pollution and leave a lot of stinking cloud behind them as well as the rikshaws by the way. And what about traffic rules? Are there any? There are not many but there is at least one very important one – honk whenever you want. Of course the meanings are different depending on the situation. Basically, there is always a reason and if not, congratulations then you have invented a new one. The most common use of honking is for overtaking what will mean you announce when you want to overtake. The other reason for honking is when you are standing in a traffic jam. Due to the fact that the Indians overtake all the time and there are traffic jams almost the whole day, you can imagine how loud it is in the streets. On big crossings you will find traffic lights or traffic police officers. If there is nothing of the sort you just enter the crossing. Of course that will cause a little traffic jam and will induce the others to start honking but it works. I have never seen an accident caused because of that. The road users certainly apply the brakes, start honking and wait impatiently till you have immersed into the traffic. It assumes to me to be a kind of war. Nobody wants to loose his position or surrender. It is always a tug of war for the best position in order to move ahead faster than the others coz nobody wants to waist his time in the traffic jam.
The roads by the way don’t deserve to be called roads, they look more like agriculture fields, full of holes and dust and every now and then little speed breakers which force the road users to slow down. It is really awful. In addition to that the roads are too small. Bangalore has grown and is still growing so fast that there is not enough space for the vehicles although currently some of the roads are maintained or widened. In order to gain space, Indian drivers clap their mirrors, use the sidewalks as roads as well in case there are any or the traces are simply divided according to the strength of traffic for the two directions. By the way, in case there is a sidewalk, it is usually in very bad state. Therefore, even in this traffic, you would prefer walking on the street. At least this applies to some sidewalks. One of the reasons for that is the fact that Indians throw everything in the streets. Hence, the sidewalks are full of garbage which I have to admit is tidied up at least in Bangalore by some old ladies every morning in some streets. But nevertheless, streets are dirty in whole India. And the second reason is peeing. You don’t have to read it twice. Yes, it’s true, Indians pee in the streets. Of course, not each Indian is peeing in the streets whenever he has to. But you will see at least one Indian peeing in the streets when you go around for some hours, believe me. At the most frequently used walls and sidewalks you can even read the sentence “Don’t urine here”. As if it is necessary to mention it. Well, unfortunately, it is but some still don’t care. Logically, there is sometimes a horrible perfume in the streets also because the cows join them. Well, what else is different concerning Indian traffic? I have made an effort and have taken notes whenever I have seen something incredible in the streets. Here is my schedule. Buses are usually crowded because it is the cheapest vehicle to go from one place to another. I have seen Indians both standing on the step with one leg and holding down on a rod and even sitting on the roof. Thus, buses have neither doors nor windowpanes; at least the public buses in the cities. Anyway, it is not necessary coz even if there were windowpanes you would open them. Having no windowpanes is the Indian way of providing air conditioning. By the way the same applies to lorries, especially when it deals with construction workers. The workers sit on the back of the lorry, which is usually much too small. It is so dangerous, I tell you. But not less dangerous is the carriage of gas bottles, ladders or windowpanes on a motorbike. But the funniest thing was a man with a sheep on the bike. I don’t know if it was still alive but I assume it was. I have even seen a complete family including three children sitting on a motorbike whereby the mother sits lengthwise on the bike and holds her baby in her arms - incredible. In Bangalore’s traffic you will find a lot of company cars conveying employees to work and back home. At the back of these cars there is usually a phone number mentioned which you can call in order to complain about the driver’s manner of driving. Sometimes even the victim brings the driver to justice himself. One day our driver almost touched a pedestrian and on another day almost a motorcyclist. In both times, the driver has been hit fiercely. The first time, I interfered but then the alleged victim also tried to hit me. They just want to get rid of their anger. As long as they haven’t got rid of it, they won’t stop and honestly speaking, you can't do anything against it. It is because of the casts in India. The driver is definitely in the lower cast than the pedestrian or the motorcyclist. Even it was told to the drivers by the our company, not to fend. The simply have to endure the hits. Let me lose one word about the rickshaw drivers. Judging what I have experienced in India, they always try to cheat you. Either they charge you a higher fare without going by meter or they take you for a ride when you go by meter. The only way to escape it is to know the fare or the shortest way.
The funniest story happened when we had to stop at a level crossing barrier on the way back home. In fact, it was not a level crossing barrier. It was more a gate, which was closed by a guard on both sides of the railways. Well, due to what happened then, I understood, why the unique traffic rule in India seams to be “There are no rules!“ On both sides of the railways they started waiting also on the trace for the oncoming traffic. Hence, you can imagine what happened when the gate was opened – a huge traffic jam and chaos. Everybody tried to edge his way through to cross the railways, the bikes and rikshaws first as they are small. All I could do was to smile and shake my head.

Pray to the equipments or Ayuda Pooja

On one day when I was on my way to work I was very surprised seeing all the cars adorned with flowers and paintings. It was really gorgeous. They have put palm leaves all around the cars. Inside the cars they installed light chains flashing on and off. At the beginning, I didn’t thought about what I could be. Then at work, the same view. Now, even the systems had been adorned by having put a little colourful pattern on the top of the system. It is a kind of festival at which the Indians pray towards the equipments. It is called Ayuda pooja. Well and this also takes into account that all the equipments are being adorned for the time of the festival. It is done because the equipments contribute enormously to everyone’s success. Without having equipments working when they are required to work, Indians were lost. So they pray to them hoping that the equipment won’t break down. Ayuda pooja traces back to a legend. It is said that a man had to pray towards his wife to get her recovered from an injury. But he was only allegedly praying to her. In fact he was praying to arms and rifles. Since she recovered from her injury, Indians follow now the same rule. Actually, I don’t know if it has really happened or not. But it is strange that people pray to equipments. But it is like that and that’s why India is different but admirable.

Unveil the secrets of your future

Sunday the 12th of November Simon, Daniel, James, Steffen and I went to the palm leaf library. Palm leaf library, you will interfere now, what is that? Well, actually, it is exactly what you would assume it to be, when hear the name. It is a library with palm leaves instead of books. Hundreds of years ago some guys wrote the people’s destiny down on palm leaves. The destiny of the people lived at that time and even the destiny of the people who will be born in the future, maybe hundreds or thousands year later. Strange, isn’t it. Well, we wanted to check it out and therefore went there. Honestly speaking, at least as for me, I didn’t want to know anything about my future. I think, if I knew what will happen next, I would just relax and say to myself, I can’t change the future, so what’s the use anyhow? At least if I believed in it. But, I am not quite sure of it. The palm leaf library was hard to find. Even as we arrived in the quarter, where this palm leaf library is supposed to be, nobody knew it. We supposed to enter an old building but what we found was a small office in the corner of a parking garage. Should this really be the “Nadi Gruha” (palm leaf reader); impossible, I thought by myself. But, obvious, we were right here as there were some people waiting for their session. They were German and so we introduced ourselves and had a little conversion about this palm leaf library. Fortunately, this guy we spoke to could tell us a lot over it. He actually manages trips for people who are interested in their future. He also meant, it would useless to try to get an appointment for today as the “Nadi Gruha” has only about six sessions per day. One session takes at about 1 ½ hours, so it is hopeless today. We should have arranged an appointment in advance, but nobody told us, I am afraid. Daniel also meant that he actually already knows when you will be coming as it is predetermined when you have to come. But I am not sure about that. Anyhow, the guy we met told us that the forecasts he made, all came true. He told us about one man who came having an appointment and it was told to him that he is going to die in half a year and it came true. Also the stories he told about the past were all true; it is all written down on this palm leaves. So, what do you think of it? As for me, I am not sure, what to think any more. It cannot be true that people thousands of years ago already knew about the destiny of people who were not born yet. Maybe, it is all a big fraud and a big business coz usually people donate at about 1.500 Rupees for this service. So let’s sum up the money he earns per day. 1.500 multiplied with 6 makes 9.000 Rupees per day. Then, this guy has a day’s week; so that will be 45.000 Rupees per week. And finally, 45.000 Rupees multiplied with 4 makes 180.000 Rupees per month. This 10 times more than I earn and more than some Indians earn in their whole life. I don’t want to start a conspiracy against this guy but I have my doubts, that’s it. It is all very mysterious. But, come to your own decision and visit “Nadi Gruha” in Bangalore. His garage office is located in Chamarajpet, 5th main road No. 33. Good luck.

Things disappear at Robertson House

All of a sudden, some guys at Robertson house were missing some stuff. Among other things food including rice, bread, chocolate, instant coffee powder and so on. As for me, I was missing two also some provisions. But what was even worse, I was missing my two vouchers the company gifted me due to my good work I provided ;-) and my mp3-player was disappeared as well. Both things were stolen out of my chest of drawers. And 5.000 Rupees had been stolen from Hans out of his unlocked wardrobe. But the worst, Deniz one morning couldn’t find his mobile phone anymore. It was pretty obvious, that our house guard who is supposed to keep an eye on us so that we don’t have parties in our house in the last evening, stole at least some of the things. We also suspected the cleaning ladies having stolen at least some provisions. Who else should steel rice and instant coffee? As if it was one of us, he would have to prepare the coffee and the meals at Robertson house so that he would have been revealed as the thief. No, it is proven, at least to us, that the cleaning ladies and Murthy stole the things. We have seen Murthy rummaging the shelves and seen the ladies wearing our slippers. As I asked the ladies whether the stole the things, they claimed not to understand English – ridiculous. Hence, we complained at Sharan, the house-keeper about the happened incidents. He was supposed to come in between 1pm and 2am but was more than 2 hours delayed. Murthy, who actually, shouldn’t have been at Robertson house at that time wanted to attend to the appointment with Sharan as well. He assumed that we suspected him and therefore he fought for his job which he was obviously about to loose. As he didn’t want to go, even though we requested him to go, Simon became very angry and threw him out of the house applying violence. But still, Murthy retorted and insisted to attend to the appointment. I was very surprised about Simon’s behaviour as I detest every kind of violence. Later on, Simon explained why he had to do that. In India, strong hierarchies exist. And Murthy as a simple house guard with no education is definitely in the lowest hierarchy. He has to follow the rules anyone else orders him to do. If someone of a minor hierarchy doesn’t follow, there is no other way as to apply violence. It would be seen as a kind of weakness if someone of a superior hierarchy didn’t apply violence in such cases. Well, finally we got rid of him coz as Sharan came he also requested him to go. Sharan then was very cooperative and promised us to change the cleaning ladies, to provide a lock to each wardrobe and to let Murthy move out. As for me, I was much more comfortable afterwards. But, unfortunately I haven’t seen my voucher again as well as my mp3-player.

“Dal fry and one sweet Lassi, please”

If you are vegetarian you can eat quite good meals in India. The Indians like vegetarian food due to two reasons. One reason is that vegetarian food is much cheaper than non-vegetarian food. And the other reason is that Indians don’t eat beef at all coz cows are holly in India. Hence, dal, which consists of beans and peas, is the most popular food also coz it is cheap, very saturated and full of energy. When Indians eat meat then they eat chicken at the most. As a guy from Europe I had to form a habit of Indian food at first coz Indian food is usually except for some dishes, very spicy. You can not imagine how spicy it is. If you added just some pepper or curry on your dish in Europe, the Indians wouldn’t taste that kind of spice. In India it is much worse. An Indian sometime explained me why all the dishes are so spicy. In former times, the Indians were forced to eat more or less rotten vegetables coz hadn’t anything else to eat. So they added quite a lot of spice to the meal in order to digest easier. I have had some upset stomachs at the beginning, but that’s normal. A lot of us had problems and even diarrhoea, also due to the fact that the meals are often not so hygienically prepared than they are in Europe. In the meanwhile I have three favourite dishes. One is Paneer butter masala. It is made of cheese added with some gravy and masala. Masala is just a kind of spice which gives the dish a really good flavour. Usually you eat it with some bread. I prefer parotha, but chapatti is good as well. The bread does not look like the bread you know from Germany. It looks merely like a pancake as it is flat and round. The second one is chicken tikka gravy. You eat this dish with a kind of bread as well. And the most favourite one is masala dosa. It is just a dosa which is a kind of bread, I would say, flavoured with some malasa. Then it is wrapped and inside smashed potatoes are added. To flavour it even more, two tasty sauces are offered as well. Usually you eat all the Indian dishes with your fingers. Hence, you immerse the bread in the gravy and wrap the chicken or whatever with it. A spoon is usually offered to you but as for the Indians, they only use it in very rare cases. Indians are poor people, so having spoons or forks is a kind of luxury. And there is another reason for avoiding taking any cutlery. The Indians assume the cutlery not to be clean. Well, actually, they are right, coz you never know what has done with the cutlery before; if it has been really cleaned and if yes, how. So, when the Indians have washed their hands before eating, they know definitely that at least their fingers are clean. When they eat, they make sure that the food doesn’t touch their palm. The food is supposed to touch only the tip of the fingers, nothing else. For that reason they eat everything with their hands, even rice. It looks really disgusting when they mix the rice with gravy by using their fingers. Bye the way, as the Indians use the left hand for toilet affairs, only the right hand is used for eating, never the left hand. Of course, you have dirty fingers when you don’t’ use a fork or spoon. Therefore, after having finished your meal you will get a small bowl of hot water to which a little piece of lemon was added. Then you rub your greasy fingers on the lemon and bath them in the hot water and that’s it. The fingers become more or less clean, especially when you wipe them afterwards with a napkin. For drinking you get water from the tape for free. For any sealed water or soft drinks you have to pay. What I‘ve mentioned regarding the cutlery applies to the glasses as well. From this it follows that Indians drink out of the glasses by just pouring the water in their mouth; the egde is never touched with the lips. I tried to eat with fingers as well as to drink in that manner; I failed in both. Ok, I managed to eat with my fingers but you don’t want to know how it looked like. And I poured the water more or less over my shirt than in my mouth. A typical Indian or even better Asian drink is Lassi. It is made out of water or milk and yogurt which are mixed in a proportion of one to one. Apart from the most common ones, sweet and salt Lassi, it is served both with crashed fruits like banana, mango or pineapple and spice if you ask for it. I only can recommend you to try it once, it is very tasty. The dishes usually don’t cost more than 100 Rupees. Thus, as for me, I go out for dinner quite often coz I am not a good cook and in addition to that I don’t feel like cooking when I come back from work at about 8pm. Once you have finished your meal, you will get the bill immediately. But don’t be surprised when you ascertain an additional amount to be added to the regular prices of you dishes – it’s the tax. The tax is 12,24 % for food and is not included in the prices which you find in the menu. The bill is presented to you in a kind of wallet. Then you put some notes inside and return it without saying anything. After a while the servant returns and hands over the wallet including the change to you again. Then if you want to you can take the change of course or give the servants a small tip. We usually do the second one. By the way don’t be surprised if you sit close to Indians and all of a sudden hear them belching. In India it’s not unusual and nobody bothers about it. Thus, if you have ever searched for an opportunity to belch at table or in a restaurant, here it is. One day I went to McDonalds. Actually, I don’t like that food so much but when you spend some months in India, you feel like having this stuff. But I was a little bit surprised as I saw the menu. No Hamburger, no Big Mac. Instead the menu included some additional vegetarian items and for non-veg chicken is offered. Well, in fact, I should have known that as Indians don’t eat beef. Indians or better Hindi believe that they are reborn as cows. Not at McDonalds but of course at some places you get beef.

Troublesome work on sites

As you can imagine the work at the sites is different from Germany. Believe it or not, I have seen Indians destroying a complete house which had two floors by using nothing but their hands. First they removed the roof and afterwards they used a hammer to destroy the walls. Of course, it was very exhausting for the work men. Due to the fact that the site was in our neighbourhood, we suffered of the dust ;-). I also had the impression that they recycle the house in a certain extend coz they gathered steel and bricks of the house. Maybe some weeks later they have rebuilt the house somewhere else, who knows. All together it took much more than one week till the house was disappeared.
And when the worker men have to open a street they open it with a rod of steel. Hence the soil becomes looser so that they can dig afterwards. The soil then is removed by using a little plate which is lifted above the head. I am sure they have diggers, even though I haven’t seen any for instance. But instead of using them, they use their hands. It might be much cheaper because of the lower labour costs.
Sites, which leave a hole back on the road, are secured by putting some stones or tyres around the hole, that’s it, no lights warning you about the danger. By the way, it is not only the men working on sites. I have also seen quite lots of women. The workers earn at about 75 Rupees per day one of my colleagues told me. This applies to those who have no education. It is subject to the construction companies whether they use steely or wooden poles for scaffolds. I have seen quite a lot of scaffolds made out of wood. The poles are tied together with ropes. I was wondering how it works. But obviously, it works.

Pondicherry 27th - 29th of October

In the south of India, I had already everything seen which would be worth seening, except for one destination, called Pondicherry. Pondicherry has been a French colony some decades ago. Hence, I was eager to see what there is around. I was sure that I would not have to expect a Eiffel tower, but at least nice cafés would be good. Furthermore, it is supposed to be famous for its beaches as it is located at the Eastern coast. The 29^th of October then finally 12 trainees took a semi-sleeper bus to Pondicherry. The bus left Bangalore at 10.15pm. I could catch some sleep but honestly speaking I just slumbered the most time on the way to Pondicherry. I was surprised as at 5am the bus driver shouted “Pondicherry!”. Could we have already arrived, at 5am? Well, obviously, then I read the name Pondicherry on the plates and commercial posters around. But what the hell should we do at 5am in Pondicherry. Everything was still closed and it was still dark. Well, time passed by as Simon first had to arrange his return ticket. At about 6.30am then we took the bus to Auroville beach which is located at about 8km away from Pondicherry. When we arrived in Auroville, it started raining. And I can already reveal that we would not get rid of the rain for the time we stayed in Pondicherry. The accommodation we have chosen was quite nice but very simple furnished. Actually, we had to stay in palm huts which have been erected on stone pillars. Inside there was nothing else but mattresses and a lot of flies. In fact, they were everywhere and tried to assault me when I was trying to get some sleep. It must have been hundreds of flies. I have never seen something like the before. In order to protect I covered myself under my blanket. I could hardly breathe anymore now but at least I got rid of these flies. When I woke up, the rain has gone. Therefore, I decided to go for a walk on the beach which was just a stone throw away. And what I have seen there is incredible. I say an Indian shitting on the beach, just two metres away from the sea. He just sat there and shitted while he was cleaning his teeth at the same time. I mean, if he had shitted in a hole on the beach or just a few metres away from the beach, I would have tolerated it. But this upset me really. The truth is that if he had shitted far away from the water, he wouldn’t have been able to use the sea to clean his ass. Unfortunately, after some minutes it started raining again. As for me, the wish of going back to Bangalore the same day arose more and more. As I was not the only one, some guys and I took a bus to Pondicherry to check whether there are some vacancies in some of the evening buses. Thank god, we could book four tickets in a sleeper bus for 10pm. After this victory we went around Pondicherry in order to do some sightseeing. But what to see, there was not much so see. We saw rickshaw drivers trying to hire passengers in vain, beggars asking for some bugs and Indians throwing their garbage in the streets. Honestly speaking, this place was not different than the others I have seen down to the present day. Anyway in this rain, it wouldn’t have been much fun. To my surprise, the names of the streets are labelled in French. But I have seen any Indian speaking French. Probably, this is just a remainder of the time when Pondicherry was a former colony. So, we decided to do some errands and to have a cup of tea or whatever. For that reason we went to Daily bread Café where we also got some very good pastry. Daniel bought the horn form the rickshaw driver who conveyed us there coz the rickshaws in Pondicherry are furnished with simple horns which you have to push to make it honking; really funny. In the late afternoon we went back to Auroville again getting our luggage. When we arrived there, I was completely soaked. The rain was so strong that even a rain coast was of no use. Hence, with time passing by I became more and more indifferent concerning the rain. While I was taking shelter of the rain at the beginning, I now didn’t care anymore about the rain. Anyway it just would have extended the time I would have kept more or less dry. All the others as well came to the decision to go back to Bangalore the same day. At about 6pm we started for Bangalore. But as we had more than three hours left when we arrived in Pondicherry, we decided to hang about in Daily bread Café again and have dinner. It was a miracle that we arrived there coz nobody of the rickshaw drivers we requested to convey us there, knew the place or understood the word channel. In Pondicherry, in contrast to Bangalore, they don’t speak any word in English. Punctual, at 10.15pm our bus started for Bangalore. Daniel and me shared one cabin the bus. I could sleep quite well in the bus. And again, after a ride of seven hours we reached Bangalore. All summed up, the trip was rather disappointing but at least I can assert having been there. And even if we could have taken a bath in the sea, the beach in Mamallapuram is much better.